Musopen puts classical recordings, scores in public domain

Musopen is an archive of professionally-played classical music that is placed …

Pre-twentieth century music all exists in the public domain, but that doesn't mean it's easy to get access either to recordings or sheet music. Want to include a Beethoven sonata as background music in your wedding video, documentary, or indie feature film? You'll need to pay unless you can dig up an ancient recorded copy from the early 1900s (and can live with the sound quality). Want to pass out sheet music of that same sonata to your high school band? Again, you will need to pay unless you can track down an ancient, out-of-copyright score.

One web site has the ambitious goal of doing away with such restrictions, putting both classical recordings and sheet music into the public domain for use by anyone in the world. Musopen has been around for a couple of years but has recently rolled out a new version of its web site, added freely-downloadable sheet music, and raised enough cash to professionally record the entire set of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and place them in the public domain.

One of the site's innovative features is its bidding system, in which users can pledge contributions toward specific pieces. When the necessary amount is raised, a professional musician is hired to perform, say, Bach's Goldberg Variations (currently the top request). Most of the money used to fund the Beethoven Sonatas was also raised from users in small increments, with a $5 average contribution. While individuals can spend that same money purchasing their own copies of such works, a donation to Musopen helps fund a musical commons that makes the pieces available worldwide and for any application. Aaron Dunn, who started the project while in college, tells Ars that big projects are in the works for the site, including deals with the Internet Archive and the OLPC project.

The bidding system

The sheet music appears to be dug up from old books and then scanned. It's embedded in the site thanks to Scribd's iPaper functionality, and Musopen even thoughtfully provides a way to play a track and view the score on the same page in order to follow along. The site also plans to sell printed copies of scores at cost.

The site is still a developing resource, offering only about 100 pieces at the moment, but the implications of its future success would be tremendous. While most music from the last hundred years remains locked up under copyright, projects like Musopen promise to provide access to the huge body of musical work that predates the 1920s. This isn't likely to do much for true classical music buffs, who will seek out and pay for the best recordings by the best artists, but the versions available at the site generally seem to be of good quality and are well suited for education and film scores, as well as private practice and performance.

Like Wikipedia, the site hopes to tap its user base to create a powerful communal resource that makes cultural knowledge and expression available to anyone without restriction. In addition to cash donations, the site also welcomes the donation of scores and public domain recordings. If you're a musician or conductor with a passion for musical education, you could certainly do worse than to contribute pieces to a resource like Musopen. Chopin's set of Nocturnes is currently a bit sparse. Any takers?